AFL Grand Final

The AFL Grand Final is one of the largest and most important annual events on the Australian sporting landscape. The AFL Grand Final is hosted at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) and is historically staged on the last Saturday in September.

The 2014 AFL Grand Final was won by the Hawthorn Hawks, who beat the Sydney Swans by 63 points. Hawthorn captain Luke Hodge won the Norm Smith Medal for best on ground in the Grand Final, with a dominating midfield performance. It secured the second straight premiership victory for the Hawks.

The two teams finished first and second on the ladder in the 2014 regular season, and it was amazing to see such a convincing result in the last

As one of Australia’s largest sporting events, the AFL Grand Final has been a ‘sell-out’ for over two decades, and is well known as one of the most difficult events to obtain tickets, with only a small number of tickets available to the general public.

The largest-ever crowd at an VFL/AFL grand final was 121,696 in 1970, when Carlton defeated Collingwood in what is acknowledged as one of the greatest AFL grand finals of all time. The match regularly draws television audiences in excess of 2.5 million viewers.

Currently, both Carlton and Essendon hold the record for the highest number of VFL/AFL Premierships, at 16 apiece.

In 2012, the Sydney Swans recorded their second AFL Grand Final win in eight seasons with a 10-point win over minor premiers Hawthorn. Swans midfielder Ryan O’Keefe was awarded the Norm Smith Medal.

One of the growing traditions of grand final day is being able to select the Norm Smith medallist. Heck, some people are even able to make a tidy sum of jellybeans through the fine art of gambling on it.